The conversation between Paul Maynard, Darren Philp and Nico Aspinall is a deeply political affair which over nearly 90 minutes discusses how politics is not going the way of Conservatives.

What is odd about Paul Maynard is that he is a mass of social contradictions. He struggled as a child, something that he doesn’t play on and didn’t touch on here. This is from the wiki on his early years.

Maynard was born in Crewe, Cheshire. Owing to being strangled by the umbilical cord at birth, Maynard has cerebral palsy and a speech defect. At the age of 22 he developed epilepsy, meaning he needs to be teetotal to avoid having seizures.^[6][7] He attended a special needs school between the ages of three and five before transferring to mainstream education.^[8]

He attended St Ambrose College, a grammar school based in Altrincham, and went on to obtain a first class history degree at University College, Oxford. Maynard was a reader at his local church and was also a governor at his local Catholic primary school.^[9]

Paul Maynard’s time as an MP saw him represent a part of the country that is so deprived that it has some of the worst morbidity and mortality among constituents of anywhere in Great Britain. Yet it voted Conservative. I suspect that Maynard’s force of character and stunning intelligence shone through in North Blackpool and Cleveleyes as it does on this podcast.

I met him once when he was Pension Minister, he was with Fiona Frobisher who he acknowledges for supporting him when he was made Pensions Minister knowing nothing about pensions. I was with Edi Truell, Edi and Paul talked about stamps and in our hour slot we hardly talked about pensions. We couldn’t find much to talk about when it came to superfunds.

The same occurs here, we learn much more about transport infrastructure and the function of the whip than pensions. I doubt that pension policy is discussed for more than 10 of the 90 minutes.

We learn a lot about Nico and Darren who are intrigued by a pensions minister who is genuinely different. We find Paul is their kindred spirit, Paul’s good like that. He will not be remembered as a politician as he took the job for reasons other than pensions. He was and is good at being ignorant and making everybody feel good

Laura Trott may be as ignorant  as Paul of pensions but she was a plant from Treasury and headed home as soon as she could. Ros Altmann is a campaigner not a politician and like Trott and Maynard and the Truss guy before Maynard, they all had no chance to make a difference.

Webb – a Liberal , Opperman – a Harrovian socialist  and now Bell (the only Labour pension politician since 2010) are all left leaning collectivists working towards pensions and away from pots. Maynard is an old fashioned Thatcherite believing that people should engage with their retirement financing. He’s pretty mainstream Conservative.

What we learn is that this is where Nico and Darren along with Tom McPhail , the ABI and Pensions UK, are also politically middle class conservatives. They are not radical conservatives as Reform are – nor is Paul Maynard though he comes close to wishing Reform would win the Makerfield bye election to keep extreme left winger Andy Burnham from power.

There really is no space in this middle class conservatism ethos for CDC.
We get the usual diatribe against it from Nico. I don’t get the impression that there is much that Paul Maynard remembers of his short time as Pensions Minister other than he could see not just his ministerial career but his political career evaporating by 2024. The Podcast doesn’t go into the collapse of Conservatism which is a shame. Maynard is too skilful to let any curve balls through.

Paul Maynard is too resilient, too intelligent and too damned nice not to be re-employed by someone who needs an expert in transport policy. He appears to be talking at conferences and on podcasts about pensions , which he goes to some length to demonstrate he knows nothing about. I do wish we would let him alone so he could do what he is good at.

I only listened for 90 minutes because he is so deliciously funny and incisive about the jobs of ministers in Westminster. There are fallow times in the weekend when you’re travelling here and there and listening to Paul Maynard is worth it, if only to understand just how much Webb, Opperman and now Bell have had to learn to get a Pensions Act across the line.

If you want easy listening , this podcast is just that. But in all honesty I suspect most listeners will not have got to the end and those who did will ask just what comes next. Where the conversation touches on pension policy it’s either to explain the continuity from the Mansion House Accord or the slow motion kicking of the ball into the long grass.

The politics of pensions may change if Andy Burnham gets into parliament and becomes PM. But I doubt he’ll want to find someone who can do Torsten Bell’s job half as well as Torsten. Already – but two years in – the strategic pension work is done. We may not get a  review of the State Pension Age. The remainder of this parliament will be about implementing the Pension Schemes Act (which is going pretty well if you are left-wing).

It is as infuriating to Helen Whately as it is to Nico Aspinall. If Paul Maynard could be bothered, he would probably be annoyed too. As for Darren Philp, I get the impression he will find a way to be on everybody’s side. This is undoubtedly what he ought to do if he is to build his business.